


Spring Fever

by kaientai



Series: Captains & Soulmates [4]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, It's the tattoos one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 20:21:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20121109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaientai/pseuds/kaientai
Summary: On the spring of his nineteenth year, Sawamura Daichi falls ill (and in love).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I feel so bad for Dad-chi why doesn't he have as many reader-insert fics like Kuroo and Oikawa LMFAO 
> 
> Anyway, this is set a year after the canon era maybe? The boys are in college now, and Daichi had set out for Tokyo to pursue a Political Science degree 'cause... IDK he'd make a great lawyer/politician IMO. Heads up though, that summary isn't entirely accurate. Daichi doesn't fall "in love" immediately. More like, he just finds his soulmate in the spring time, too. But hey, it's up to you to decide whether or not he falls in love/catches feelings at first sight, 'cause writing can be interpreted in lots'a ways.

On the spring of his nineteenth year, Sawamura Daichi falls ill.

It's not like it's his first time coming down with the flu—nor will it be the last, he thinks disdainfully. But he's always managed to pull himself together during these trying times. The only difference now is that he has a final coming up in a few days, and he can't sacrifice any more time that can be dedicated to revising than he already has. He's been falling so behind in his Political Governance class that the exam is probably the only shot Daichi has left to get into the dean's list for the current semester.

But every time he musters up enough strength to pick up one of his readings, the words kept dancing across the seams of his vision. Instead of new-found knowledge, all he gains is a killer migraine.

Cue his too-loud-for-life roommate, Bokuto Koutarou, rushing back inside their shared apartment with a paper bag filled with various brands of paracetamol (even though Daichi only asked him to buy _one_). It takes him a while to convince Bokuto that, no, he isn't dying of some terminal illness, and that he should really shouldn't be tearing up at the hypothetical loss of his roommate—

"Oh, I know!" Bokuto chimes in and Daichi could almost see the lightbulb popping on top of his head. "Kuroo might know how to get you back into shape. All STEM majors know how to cure fevers right?" 

"Aren't _you_ a STEM major?" Daichi questions warily. 

Bokuto howls like Daichi just told him the joke of the century. "Please. Everyone knows I'm only in it for the volleyball scholarship." 

"Then why didn't you just enroll under a sport-related program instead?" 

He shrugs. "Guys from Engineering are cool." 

Like all his conversations with Bokuto, this one is just as equally demanding—only coming to an end once Daichi promised to study later, get some rest, and to take his medicine regularly. Not that he had any plans not to, anyway. 

* * *

He knows that he always slept like the dead every time he's running a fever. It was near impossible to shake him awake unless you attack him where he's weakest (his feet are ticklish). But somehow, a few hours after Bokuto left for volleyball practice, Daichi is awoken by the sensation of someone lightly tapping his shoulder. When he opens his sleep-ridden eyes, the first thing he notices are the vibrant cherry blossoms that bloomed in front of his bedroom window. That's strange. He could've sworn he asked Bokuto to draw the blinds when he left—

"Did you sleep alright?"

Startled, he cranes his head towards the direction of the unfamiliar voice that greeted him. There you were, seated at the foot of his bed with your hands folded on your lap. Your lips are stretched into a thin smile; subtle yet reassuring. But like any other person who wakes up with a complete stranger in his bedroom, the first thing that comes out of Daichi's mouth is, "Um, who are you?"

Your grin falters for half a second before dissolving into a fit of chuckles. "Oh, sorry. I thought that idiot Bo already introduced me." 

"No. He really didn't," he intones blearily, yawning as he rubs away the drowsiness in his eyes. 

"(Surname)," you supply, putting out an outstretched hand which Daichi shakes with obvious hesitation. "Full disclosure: I'm a Nursing sophomore. Bo sort of barged into my dorm room pleading that I 'save his roommate', but you seem pretty okay to me." 

"He does tend to be dramatic. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, (Surname)-san." Daichi groans, massaging his temples. 

You dismiss his apology with a wave of your hand. "Nah, it's not that big of a deal. I haven't really done anything yet, and since your flu isn't all that nasty, I figured I'd just wait for you to wake up. Going herbal makes the fevers go down way quicker than standard medicine." 

"Pardon?"

"I _mean_ this is nothing a cup of lemon balm tea can't fix," is how you address the confusion on his face. "Do you mind if I feel for your temperature? I don't have a thermometer on me, but I have good intuition."

"I don't really think aspiring doctors should rely on intuition," Daichi remarks dryly, but lets you scoot closer to him so you could place your palm on his forehead. The feel of your cold fingers against his skin startles him, but he reminds himself that it's probably just the fever fucking with his senses. It clicks to him a little late how little distance there is between the two of you, but Daichi knows that he's long graduated from being flustered around girls when they're too close for comfort. You're just someone he met not five minutes ago, taking his temperature through very unreliable methods. This is nothing.

"Who says I wanted to be a doctor, though?" You chuckle, rising to your feet to retrieve something from a tote bag he didn't notice you had brought along. There, you procure a silver thermos which you toss nonchalantly in Daichi's direction. 

He yelps, scrambling to catch it in his hands (which he manages to successfully do). The metal is warm in his fingers and it prompts him to look up at you inquisitively. 

"Drink up," you tell him, sauntering over to his bedroom window. 

"Correct me if I'm wrong but..." Daichi dubiously stares at the container in his hands. "Do all med students just happen to carry some lemon balm tea with them all the time? Curing unsuspecting victims of the flu?" 

"You'd be surprised what med students carry in their bags, honestly." 

That...doesn't really answer his question, but Daichi can already feel the weight of another oncoming migraine pressing itself in between his temples. He's taken most of the allowable dose of paracetamol over the past four hours and he doesn't really feel like the fever is going to leave him be any time soon.

As do most college students, eighty percent of Daichi's liquid intake takes form in coffee. Tea is a luxury a broke freshman like him can't really afford, but when he takes the first sip from your thermos, it makes him think twice about his preferences. The herbal aftertaste blends perfectly with the sweetness of the brew. It warms him up in ways Daichi didn’t know he needed and carefully coaxes the tension out of his posture. 

"This actually tastes pretty great, (Surname)-sa—" His breath catches in his throat when he catches sight of you tying your hair into a ponytail. You (thankfully) have your back turned to him, which makes you completely oblivious to the fact that his mouth is agape, unable to formulate coherent words. He unknowingly reaches underneath the hem of his shirt, fingers grazing the inked skin just above his heart. He doesn't need a mirror to know where it is and what it looks like. Especially not if the exact same tattoo of a murder of crows is intricately etched onto the exposed nape of your neck. 

"Can you already feel the magic of herbal tea?" You turn around with a grin, yanking back his consciousness into the reality before him. 

"Um, y-yes," he stammers. _Shit_. He doesn't know the protocol when you unexpectedly cross paths with your soulmate at the most inconvenient of times. 

"That's good," you tell him as he returns your thermos with trembling hands. "Just get a few more hours of bedrest and drink lots of water. Take another tablet of paracetamol after you eat dinner."

As Daichi sits in the ear-splitting silence as you gathered your belongings, he contemplates about how he's going to deal with the situation accordingly. He can't really be mistaken about your identity; he's seen many soul marks in his lifetime and none of them had been any way similar to his own. This is the first and only instance where another person dons the spitting image of the same tattoo on his chest. 

"Say, I didn't really get your name." Turning back to him, you affix him with a questioning stare. 

This is it, right? This is the window of opportunity that the universe is granting him, _right_?

"S-Sawamura Daichi," he replies. "Ah, (Surname)-san, this may sound a bit strange but I think I might be your—"

His profession is interrupted by the sound of his bedroom door creaking open. The sound practically grates at his ears, making him flinch even though it isn't even that loud of a disturbance. Emerging from outside is another one of the troublesome acquaintances he's made since he moved to Tokyo. Kuroo Tetsurou, in all his bed-headed glory, sashays into his room like he's the landlord—a sleazy grin plastered on his chiseled face.

"Sa~wa~mu~ra~" Kuroo greets in a way that strangely reminds him of Oikawa from Miyagi. "How you doing, buddy? A little bird told me someone came down with the flu."

"I wouldn't really call Bokuto a _little bird_, Kuroo," Daichi interjects. "He's beefier than both of us combined." 

"Now, now. Don't downgrade that Kuroo-Sawamura hybrid just yet. You've got thighs for _days_, man!"

"Tetsu," you chide his new guest, much to Daichi's surprise. Did you two...know each other somehow? 

Kuroo sneers before walking further into his room (uninvited), kicking the door shut behind him. In turn, you approach Kuroo with an inscrutable look, arms crossed and lips fixed into a pout. An unfamiliar sensation roots itself in Daichi's chest at the way you looked at the ebony-haired boy with playful tenderness, his mind jumping into a conclusion that he certainly hopes doesn't coincide with the truth—

"I see you've met my girlfriend then," Kuroo slings an arm across your shoulders with a nonchalance that's almost too overbearing for him to look at. "I would have helped you out myself, but my Chemistry lecture got in the way. She's a total hack doctor, Sawamura. Did she make you drink that magic tea?"

"Shut _up_," you reprimand, sulkily smacking away Kuroo's arm. "I'm not a doctor, much less a fraud. And quit acting like you don't come to me when you're running a fever!" 

"I'm just messing with you, babe," he snickers, placing a quick kiss on your temple before turning back to Daichi, who's still stricken with silence. "You need anything else, dude? Companionship? A good story? You wanna order some take-out?" 

"What he _needs_ is a few more hours of peaceful, undisturbed sleep." You pinched Kuroo by the ear, dragging him back to Daichi's bedroom door. The other boy yelps in surprise but lets you do as you please without any protests. Once you swing the door back open, pushing Kuroo outside in the process, you flash Daichi one last look. "Sorry about him, Sawamura. Everyone tells me that I'm lucky for having snagged the Applied Chemistry department's prodigy freshman, but sometimes I'm not so sure." Despite the ill-intent of your words, a small smile makes its way past your lips. 

"I don't mind," he insists despite the treacherous pang in his heart that's threatening to split his chest in half. "Thank you for dropping by, (Surname)-san. I'm feeling a lot better now, actually." 

Once you've exchanged your farewells, you carefully closed the door to his room. But despite the barrier in between, he could still hear you and Kuroo bickering as you let yourselves out of the apartment. When the reassuring sound of the front door slamming back into place fills his ears, Daichi lets himself fall back into his mattress—warmth still clinging onto the freshly laundered sheets. 

He lets a minute pass by, then two, before rummaging though the drawer by his night stand for his cell phone. Then, he makes a rather necessary call.

_"Daichi? What's wrong?"_

"Why are you assuming that something's wrong just because I called you?" 

_"Because you only ever call when there's something wrong?"_ Sugawara sighs at the other end of the line and Daichi can already picture him dragging a palm across his face. 

"Fine," he relents. "I think I may have found my soulmate." 

_"What? Isn't that good news?"_

"Well, here's the thing...she has a boyfriend."

_"...You're on speaker phone and Asahi just mimed 'he's fucked'." _

"I'm fucked," Daichi agrees.

Sugawara grunts_. "Yeah. You're _fucked_." _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE, this series isn't dead yet!

"You've found your soulmate?!"

Daichi hisses at his loud roommate, eyes pleading for him to _please_ keep it down. Thankfully, Bokuto seems to get the hint and shrinks in on himself in the next moment, but the excited glimmer in his eyes remains. 

"Who is it?" he whispers. "Is it someone I know? You gotta tell me, Sawa—"

"If you found out that Akaashi was your soulmate but he was dating someone else, what would you do?" Daichi makes a beeline to get his point across with no hesitation. It'll take ages for him to get a straight answer out of the wing spiker if he beats around the bush. 

"What?" Bokuto stares at him bug-eyed for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side. "Is Akaashi _cheating_ on me?" 

"_No_," he groans, dragging a palm over his face. "I mean... What if, when you met Akaashi, he was in a relationship with another person. Would you tell him straight up that you're his soulmate or would you wait until they broke up?" 

For a solid moment, a look of careful contemplation passes over the wing spiker's face, and Daichi remembers the time Akaashi told him that Bokuto had these random bouts of wisdom every now and again. 

He can only hope that this is one of those times. 

"That's kind of a hard question, Sawamura," he huffs, brows knitted with exasperation. "I'd hate to be in that situation. But I don't think I can just intrude on their relationship like it's nothing. I mean, they probably spent a lot of time together and all... It'd be super shitty to just ruin all that, even if we _are_ soulmates." 

The sulk in Bokuto's tone sounds so genuine, it catches Daichi off guard. In all honesty, he didn't know what to expect when he approached Bokuto while the spiker ate alone at the cafeteria. He isn't the most empathic of people, and Daichi is convinced that volleyball is the only thing turning the gears in his head. But he completely understands why Bokuto would hold himself back in that hypothetical scenario.

Because that's exactly what he's doing in his own, true-to-life situation. 

"I see," he says, letting out a heavy breath. "Thanks, Bokuto."

As Daichi steps out of the benches, the wing spiker grabs his wrist. With one brow quirked, he turns back around to face him. 

"Whoever that is, don't let them go," he tells him, that golden-eyed stare almost smoldering. "Even if they look happy with someone else, you two share the same marks for a reason." 

That only makes things all the more conflicting, but Daichi decides not to tell him that. 

* * *

To his chagrin, even though he only had to skip one day of classes because of yesterday's flu, Daichi's backlog already piled up on him before he knew it. 

He missed a quiz in his Purp-Comm class, had a paper to do for Art Appreciation, and he strangely wound up as partners with Ushijima in one of the Gen Ed classes they shared together. He didn't even know that Shiratorizawa's ex-captain also went to the same university as him, but the world really is small in Tokyo. 

So small that he just happens to bump into you when he grabs a coffee from the vending machine. 

"Sawamura-san, hello!" you chirp, smiling warmly at him. You're wearing scrubs for today, and the stark white of your uniform brings out the brightness in your eyes. 

He fumbles with the canned drink in his hands for a moment, composure nearly slipping. Thankfully, he manages to tame the irregular thrum of his heart, returning your greeting just before the silence stretches into awkwardness. 

"Hey, (Surname)-san," he says, suddenly conscious of the way his voice sounds. Why did it seem like it was too high-pitched—

"You seem well now," you observe. "You looked really pale yesterday. Good to know that the color already went back to your face."

He can feel himself flushing at your words. It isn't like you complimented him, but damn does he feel like it. 

"Y-Yeah. Thank you for the tea, by the way. And... I'm sorry for the inconvenience. I don't usually get sick—"

"Daichi, it's nothing!" you insist, but immediately clamp a hand around your mouth. "S-Sorry. I'm kind of just used to calling people by their first names. I mean, I'll cut it out if you don't want me to..."

No. He really likes the way his name sounds in your voice.

He shakes his head, the dregs of a smile teasing his lips. "I don't mind." 

"Alright, alright. Oh, by the way, Tetsurou and I are headed to the yakiniku place just a few blocks away," you tell him. "You wanna come with? His treat." The way your grin scales wider at that last part makes something in his chest constrict with a foreign feeling. It isn't...unpleasant, but he knows that he shouldn't feel like this for his close friend's _girlfriend_. 

Hesitantly, he scratches the back of his neck, eyes shying away from your expectant gaze. "Ah, sorry, (Surname)-san. I've got a lot of work to catch up on." 

You let out a long sigh, lower lip jutted into a pout, and it _actually_, physically pains him to see you make that face.

"You law majors are always so diligent, huh?" you chuckle. "Alright. See you around then!" 

Watching your retreating form is probably more mind-boggling than studying for his Pol-Gov final, if he's being real with himself. The grip he has on his coffee is enough to deform the can, leaving imprints of his fingers on the surface. Daichi groans, finally deciding to open it and down the caffeine in one go. 

When he disposes of his drink, his cell phone buzzes with a telltale text notification in his pockets. Curious, he immediately checks who it's from.

> **[From: Ushijima]**
> 
> Are we still going to meet at the library today? I have to attend volleyball practice at four o'clock. 

Oh, right. He and Japan scheduled a study session for the day. But Daichi couldn't help but take note of the awfully formal way Ushijima composed his text messages. If it was Bokuto, he would probably send something like "we still g at the library? got practice @ 4" or some other, lazy variation. 

He then finds himself wondering how _you_ typed out your text messages.

When Daichi catches himself putting the idea into consideration, he takes his face in both hands and suppresses the urge to yell. Why is it that every single thing he thought about always leads back to you? He's been doing fine not thinking about his soulmate before—not really concerned with when he's bound to meet you. But now, you're practically the only person occupying his thoughts in every waking minute.

What is _up_ with him these days? 

As Daichi makes haste towards the in-campus library, he types a less ritualistic reply back to Ushijima, asking if he could bring the assigned readings for their class since Daichi forgot his at home. Once he throws himself completely into his coursework, he's bound to get these invasive thoughts of you out of his mind, right? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, turns out I really can't conclude this and chuck in some drama with only two chapters so...here we are again with another multi-chapter. *sighs* 
> 
> But hey! Chapters will be much shorter for this compared to my other work because I'm trying to be concise with my story-telling now whoops.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: ok that ushi is the last multi chapter soulmate fic i'll make no excuses  
Also me: *carefully slides this 1/2 fic into the sawamura/reader tag anyway*
> 
> I'm home for the weekend and since my workload at uni is yet to become massive, I indulged myself with writing part 4 of the series! As usual, if you wanna talk, I'm just on [tumblr](http://turooketsurou.tumblr.com) or [quotev](http://quotev.com/harusame) :3c


End file.
